In Dreams Consciousness Is The Actor And The Observer

In the beginning, which is really no beginning. The will wants to know itself and consciousness is awakened and with the awakening of consciousness the will is split in two. The one will, whole and complete in itself, is now at once actor and observer. Conflict is inevitable, for the actor now wants to be free from limitations under which he has been obliged to put himself in his desire for consciousness. He has in one sense been enabled to see, but at the same time there is something which he, as observer, cannot see.

D.T. Suzuki the most respected 20th century expert on Far Eastern philosophy wrote those words. Suzuki is talking about the entrance of consciousness into a specific reality. Whenever a reality is entered by consciousness, there are other aspects of consciousness that continue to function in other realities. Dreams are an example of that compound and complex existence. We are all actors in our dreams, and we are also observers. Our consciousness splits into aspects of itself at will. One aspect is free of limitations and another, the observer, wonders why there are no limitations. Both of those aspects of consciousness are aware of every experience as actor and observer, and consciousness absorbs each one. One aspect absorbs the acting role, and the other absorbs the observing role.

If we look at dreams as a reality that has no beginning, we find clues about consciousness itself. We begin to understand that consciousness is not a thing. It is the energy behind all things, and in all things. It is able to form physical elements, and transform the irony within those elements. Consciousness enters dreams and becomes the subject, verb and object as well as the dangling participle that makes no sense but captures all sense. Consciousness forms the physical world and becomes what we want it to be. It is the producer, director, cameraman, writer, actor and audience within that world. It is the main attraction that introduces all other attractions, and we form experiences about it, and within it.

Our consciousness in dreams sets the tone for our physical consciousness. The actor and actors in our dreams give our observing physical consciousness the chance to become an actor that knows that the art of observing is just one role in a series of value-fulfillment achievements in that reality.